approach; and, in several towns, he was received by the mayors and magistrates in their formalities. The avenues to these towns were lined with spectators, the hedges and trees were hung with garlands of flowers; flags were displayed on the church steeples; and the air resounded with cries of "Sacheverell and the Church." After a few weeks, however, sobriety began to return; the doctor's picture was frequently torn in pieces, and, in many places, he himself was rudely treated. Sacheverell had done his work, and had, more than any other cause, helped the Tories back to their seats of office. In 1713, the Queen presented him to the valuable rectory of St Andrew's, Holborn. The first sermon which he preached in the church of that parish, he sold for £100, and forty thousand copies of it were speedily bought by eager purchasers. After this, he gradually dwindled into insignificance, and signalised himself only, during the remainder of his life, by contemptible squabbles with his parishioners. He died at the age of fifty-two, in 1724. "He was," says Bishop Burnet, "a bold, insolent man, with a very small measure of religion, virtue, learning, or good sense; but he forced himself into popularity and preferment by the most petulant railings at Dissenters and Low Churchmen !" Daniel Defoe says of him, "Bear-garden language is his peculiar talent. He is known in his books as a pulpit incendiary; the Church's bloody standard-bearer; the trumpeter sent out by High Church authority to preach against union, to proclaim open war between parties, and to hang out flags of defiance."

High Church buffoon, and Oxford's stated jest,

A noisy, saucy, swearing, drunken priest."

Such was the man whom Samuel Wesley helped in an emergency. We are sorry to register such a fact, but truth and honesty compel us. The only excuse which can be suggested is, that during the last few years, the rector of Epworth had been a serious sufferer from dissenting hatred, and that his cld dissenting friends were now his bitterest enemies.

The new parliament met on the 25th of November 1710, and the Queen, in her opening speech, showed that she was in the hands of new advisers. She no longer condescended to use the word toleration, but spoke of indulgence to be allowed "to scrupulous consciences." This term of indulgence was the more observed, because it was the pet word of Sacheverell, who held,

that whatever liberty of conscience Dissenters had, was a matter of indulgence, and not of right. The Whigs were now in a minority, and the Tories were the ruling power.

Convocation, of course, met on the same day as parliament, and of this ecclesiastical synod Samuel Wesley was a member; an honour perhaps awarded him for the service which, at the beginning of the year, he had rendered to Sacheverell. The clergy of the Lower House chose Dr Atterbury, Dean of Carlisle, for their prolocutor; and then came down a royal rescript, very different to that to which they had of late years been accustomed, a licence empowering convocation to enter upon such consultations as the present state of the Church required. The subjects to be discussed were,-1. The late excessive growth of infidelity, heresy, and profaneness; 2. Excommunications, and abuses of commutation money; 3. The visitation of prisoners, and the admission of converts from the Church of Rome; 4. Rural Deans; 5. The glebes and tithes belonging to benefices; 6. Clandestine marriages. As usual, the two houses were at constant variance with each other. Most of the winter was spent in discussing the heresies of Whiston's "Primitive Christianity Revived." This learned, ingenious, but eccentric man had succeeded Sir Isaac Newton, in 1703, at Cambridge, as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics; but had recently adopted Arian principles, and published them in the book already mentioned. For this, he was expelled from Cambridge, and was censured by convocation. There was an endless amount of talk; but this was the only business done, when convocation closed on the 12th of June 1711. The House of Commons, however, took into consideration the want of churches in London, and the thanks of the lower house of convocation were presented to them by the prolocutor, who also submitted a scheme for the new churches. On the 7th of May 1711, the Commons resolved to grant to her Majesty £350,000 for the building of fifty new churches, and the purchasing of sites of churches, churchyards, and ministers' houses, in and about the cities of London and Westminster. This magnificent scheme originated in the convocation of which Samuel Wesley was a member; but, of course, it was carried into effect by parliament.*

On the 7th of December 1711, parliament re-assembled, and convocation as well. Convocation did nothing, except discuss *Life of Queen Anne; also, Lathbury's History of Convocation.

*

priestly absolution and lay baptism; but parliament signalised itself by passing the notorious "Occasional Conformity Bill," which had been trying to struggle into life for the last ten years.

Whilst Samuel Wesley was attending these sessions of convocation, his wife was doing her utmost to supply his lack of service among his parishioners. The following facts are taken from a letter, dated Feb. 6, 1711-12," and addressed to "the Rev. Mr Wesley, in St Margaret's Churchyard, Westminster." After giving a detailed account of the manner in which she had been led to adopt the practice of reading to and instructing her family, Mrs Wesley proceeds to state, that the servant lad had told his parents of these family gatherings, and they desired to be admitted. They told others, who begged the same permission, until these domestic congregations amounted to thirty or forty individuals. Mrs Wesley read to them the best and most awakening sermons she could find, and discoursed with them freely and affectionately. The congregation still grew, until now it numbered above two hundred, and on the Sunday before the letter was written, many had been obliged to go away through there not being room for them to stand.

At this time, says Bishop Burnet, there appeared an inclination in many of the clergy to a nearer approach to the Church of Rome. Hicks, who was now at the head of the Jacobite party, had, in several books, promoted the notion that there was a proper sacrifice made in the eucharist. He also openly condemned the supremacy of the crown in ecclesiastical affairs, and the method in which the Reformation was carried. One Brett preached a sermon, in several of the pulpits of London, which he afterwards printed, in which he said no repentance could serve without priestly absolution, and affirmed that the priest was vested with the same power of pardoning that our Saviour himself had. Another conceit was the invalidity of lay baptism, and that, as dissenting teachers were laymen, they and their congregations ought to be rebaptized. Dodwell left all who died without the sacraments to the uncovenanted mercies of God; and maintained that none had a right to give the sacraments except the apostles, and, after them, bishops and priests ordained by them. The bishops thought it necessary to put a stop to such doctrines, and agreed to a declaration against the irregularity of all baptism by persons not in holy orders; but yet allowing that, according to the practice of the primitive Church, and the constant usage of the Church of England, no baptisın ought to be reiterated. Archbishop Sharpe (the friend of Samuel Wesley) refused to sign the declaration, pretending that it would encourage irregular baptisins. The Archbishop of Canterbury, with most of the bishops of his province, submitted the matter to the convocation. It was agreed to in the Upper House, but the Lower House refused even to consider it, because it would encourage those who struck at the dignity of the priesthood. This was all that passed in the convoca. tion of 1712.—(Burnet's History of His Own Times, 1st edit., vol. ii. p. 605.) + Methodist Magazine, 1781, p. 313.

Mrs Wesley had thus, unintentionally, become a sort of female preacher. Why did she begin these services? She says, because she thought the end of the institution of the Sabbath was not fully answered by attending church unless the intermediate spaces of time were filled up by other acts of piety and devotion; but we incline to think there was another reason beside this. Mr Wesley, being so much in London, required a curate to supply his place at Epworth, and it so happened that his curate at this period, Mr Inman, was not so efficient as was desirable. On one occasion, when Wesley returned from London, the parishioners complained that the curate had "preached nothing to his congregation, except the duty of paying their debts, and behaving well among their neighbours." The complainants added, "We think, sir, there is more in religion than this." Mr Wesley replied, "There certainly is; I will hear him myself." The curate was sent for, and was told that he must preach next Lord's-day, the rector at the same time, saying, "I suppose you can prepare a sermon upon any text I give you." "Yes, sir,” replied the ready curate. "Then," said Wesley, "prepare a sermon on Heb. xi. 6, 'Without faith it is impossible to please God."" The time arrived, and the text being read with great solemnity, the curate began his brief sermon, by saying "Friends, faith is a most excellent virtue, and it produces other virtues also. In particular, it makes a man pay his debts;" and thus he proceeded for about fifteen minutes, when the rector clearly saw that paying debts was the alpha and the omega of the curate's theology. It is scarce likely that the ministry of such a man would satisfy the enlightened mind and religious heart of Susannah Wesley; and it is not to be wondered at that she should try to supply its defects by reading to her children and to two hundred of her neighbours, on Sunday evenings, the best sermons she could find in her husband's library.

The congregations of the rector's wife were probably larger than those of the rector's curate. Inman heard of these gatherings, and wrote to Mr Wesley, complaining that Mrs Wesley, in his absence, had turned the parsonage into a conventicle; that the church was likely to be scandalised by such irregular proceedings, and that they ought not to be tolerated any longer. Mr Wesley wrote to his wife, suggesting that she should let some one else read the sermons. • Methodist Magazine, 1781, p. 313.

She replied that there was not a man among them that could read a sermon without spoiling a good part of it, and that none of her children had a voice strong enough to be heard by so many people. The only thing that disquieted her was "presenting the prayers of the people to God." She had been obliged to do this, but, because of her sex, she doubted its propriety.

The curate still complained, and the rector, writing to his wife, desired that the meetings should be discontinued. She replied that Inman and a man called Whiteley, and one or two others, were the only persons in the parish that had raised complaints; that calling the meeting a conventicle did not alter the nature of the thing; and that, notwithstanding its alleged scandal, it had been the means of bringing more people to the church than anything else had been, for the afternoon congregation had been increased by it from twenty to above two hundred, which was a larger congregation than Inman had been accustomed to have in the morning; some families who seldom went to church now began to go constantly; and one person, who had not been there for seven years, was now attending with the rest. Besides all this, the meetings had been the means of conciliating the minds of the people towards the Wesley family, and they now lived in the greatest amity imaginable. After stating these facts, Mrs Wesley adds :"If, after all this, you think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience; but send me your positive command in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ." What the upshot was we have no means of knowing. John and Charles Wesley were present at these irregular meetings -the first Methodist meetings ever held-Charles a child four years old, and John a boy of nine. "Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth!"

• Whitehead's Life of Wesley, p. 54.